2  Defining the study area

Our first effort was in establishing a consistent study area shape that could be used by all the work package teams. Using as a reference the study area portrayed in the MPA Europe technical description, we defined the boundaries of the final shape from a product developed by the Flanders Marine Institute that intersects the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) and the IHO (International Hydrographic Organization) seas map.

The study area

The whole process of creating the study area, as well as the produced shapefiles are available at the GitHub repository mpaeu_studyarea.